Reviews/Music; Mussorgsky and Berg From Barry Douglas

By JAMES R. OESTREICH

Published: March 12, 1990

The Irish pianist Barry Douglas, who won the Tchaikovsky International Competition in 1986, gave a backward glance in his recital at Kaufmann Concert Hall of the 92d Street Y on Saturday evening. His program included Mussorgsky's ''Pictures at an Exhibition,'' which he performed to great acclaim in Moscow, and Tchaikovsky's Sonata in G (Op. 37). He has recorded both works.

The Tchaikovsky, a relative rarity, shared the first half with Berg's terse one-movement Piano Sonata (Op. 1), from which it could hardly differ more. Tchaikovsky's four-movement work (which the program notes erroneously placed in G minor more often than G major) is garrulous and repetitious. It seems eager to recapture the virtuosic impulse of the First Piano Concerto, completed three years before, but the rhetoric is mostly empty and unredeemed by the lovelier moments.

Throughout the evening, Mr. Douglas went right for the jugular, with brilliantly virtuosic performances more concerned with making a grand statement than with pinpoint accuracy. He gave a rich, sonorous account of the Berg, and played the Tchaikovsky's virtuosity to the hilt, fairly reveling in the bombast. He seemed to lose his way a bit in the middle of the highly charged finale, but on the whole pulled the listener along through main force.

Mr. Douglas's long experience with ''Pictures'' was reflected in a thoroughly considered rendition that occasionally verged on fussiness (the leaning on the beat in ''Tuileries'') or preciousness (the suddenly hushed opening of the concluding ''Great Gate of Kiev'' after the clangorous, swirling octaves). But again, his virtuosic abandon swept everything before it. Mistakes were inevitable (though perhaps not the one in the note-by-note progression in the fifth measure of ''Pictures''), and Mr. Douglas seemed to wear them proudly, as the badges of courage they were.